Who President Cory Was to This Martial Law Baby

from FB post, 3 August 2009

I could not understand my grief at the passing of President Corazon Aquino. As an arrogantly faithless youth in 1986, I and fellow organized nat-dem youths had chosen to boycott the snap presidential elections. The choice seemed clear to many, but the idea of toppling a mighty dictatorship using the ballot seemed impossible, if not foolish.

What many called the rebirth of the nation had many fathers. So her administration, as even her husband predicted in the aftermath of 20 years of one-man rule, was constantly under threat, essentially from the weight its internal contradictions.

Under her rule, I wept at the Mendiola Massacre, the still-unsolved assassinations of my personal heroes Ka Lando Olalia and Lean Alejandro. I was stunned that she allowed her education secretary to fire aggrieved public school teachers whose allowances were stuck in the graft-inducing red tape. I lent my fist and angry chants against her campaign for the retention of the US bases.

Years after she left office, when her actions (like using her political capital to help oust Erap) seemed more in tune with mine (perhaps because they didn’t lend the power of officialdom), I would grudgingly acknowledge her contributions to nation-building, admit to the enormity of her job as post-Marcos president, and applaud her for her sacrifices. My grumblings about missed opportunities grew fainter. I came to appreciate her, especially in relation to her successors, mga adik sa poder.

And as I grew older in the job of reporting history as it happens, I understood her place in it and what she has come to stand for—courage and unity, representing our potential as a people. She did not love this country any less than other self-proclaimed patriots, only different; her sense of patriotism was defined by her own set of circumstances. She was history’s special child—an accidental hero, a reluctant leader, but by many accounts, a stubborn president.

In the weeks prior to her death, as we all waited for the inevitable, I remembered family and friends and other icons whose cancer tested their threshold for pain and suffering, and the limits of their faith. I remember my cancer-stricken an-kong, who made my daddy cry because he couldn’t stand the torture that the disease brought his father. I remember a friend’s dad, who insisted on bearing the pain, saying no to painkillers. I remember my aunt whose dying wishes were for sunshine, a home-cooked meal (but she kept throwing up small pieces of bread soaked in milk), and the ability to breathe on her own (she was attached to a respirator and other life-saving machines). I also remember a friend in pain who asked, “Why me?” I remember Francis M., who called on his kababayans to be proud of their identity.

In the end, President Aquino was simply a person who adored her kids and apos, who got sick, who expressed herself through art, who suffered pain, who continued to try to shape her country, who was true to who she was and to what she believed, who was mortal.

One with fellow Filipinos, I honor her life. And the L hand sign, which has lately degenerated into a taunt for the loser, once again stands for laban. Fight on. In her death, uso na ulit ang magmahal sa bayan.

Monday, August 3, 2009

How not to wage a revolution

Dos and don’ts for those who started what they couldn’t finish on November 29, 2007 at the Manila Peninsula Hotel

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v1553223SKXzjr5p

1. Don’t stage it from a five-star hotel. It has been done before and it failed miserably. Do it from where it will create a lot more impact. A television station, a military camp, and of course Malacanang are the best bets. Communist rebels still wage their revolution from among their professed constituents of the poor in the countryside. Does Senator Antonio Trillanes IV know who his are? The 11 million voters who voted for him? Come on!

2. Don’t do it before a long weekend. People have already made plans. They don’t need another diversion when they are busy living their own lives or simply eking out a living. And certainly don’t do it close to the holidays. Filipinos live for temporary escapes from life’s hardships. Don’t be a Grinch and rob us of these momentary elusions. Even the most sensational coup attempts waged during this time of year were simply that -- attempts.

3. Don’t just wing it. This is not a stand-up comedy act. Manila Pen was a battle zone and lines were drawn and people could’ve gotten killed. You can’t just escape your armed escorts and proceed with the attitude, “Let’s see who’ll join me and we’ll take it from there.” Have a plan, man.

4. Don’t use spokesmen who would not -- or could not -- explain what the entire exercise is about. Speak plainly. For instance, say, “This is a revolution. We don’t recognize Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president of the republic. Join us and we’ll kick her out together.” None of the let-the-media-call-it-what-they-want crap. Heck, I wanted to call it a courtroom-hearing escape that turned into a hotel takeover. And please, no wishy-washy we-were-in-the-area-by-chance excuse.

5. Do your homework. Erap getting kicked out of office does not count as an actual overthrow. It did not happen because of strong, massive protests against him. It happened because he was weak and soft. Remember, he stepped down. Marcos’s expulsion took a long, long, long time. It cost a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And it took a lot of hard work like organizing, propaganda, alliance-building, and mobilizing.

6. Do know thyself. When the dust settled, Senator Panfilo Lacson gifted Senator Antonio Trillanes IV with Sun Tzu’s Art of War. How apt and fitting! Has the once-professional soldier become too much of a politician that he has forgotten this first basic rule of war?

7. Do know thy enemy. Again from the war master; because if the jailed senator and company didn’t know the strengths and weaknesses of their enemy, would they have started what they did in the first place? And then let it hang over their head like a wet rag dripping with mockery? What would have been better? A Faeldon-style escape for Trillanes and Brigadier General Danilo Lim should embarrass the government no end.

8. Do have balls. Be prepared to die. No one spoke it. The devil you dared was small-fry. “We’re prepared for the long haul,” was what one of the spokesmen said. “I even brought clothes.” He got ready for a sleepover. Did you expect a tea party? Even the hotel kitchen closed down because hotel staff also had to leave the hotel.

9. Do study history. The wages of revolution are death and destruction. The wages of the revolution against Marcos are still being paid now -- a full generation hence -- still in death and destruction, in ways both subtle and not. Please address that. Because we won’t have an Erap or even a Gloria if we had done that.

10. Do not be crybabies. This is for all the protagonists in that Pen play -- the mutinous soldiers, their leaders, and their supporters; the media; the government forces, their leaders, and their factotums. Notwithstanding the tear gas, to all of us, it was just, “Trabaho lang ito (All in a day’s work).” The only ones that had the right to cry were the hotel guests, who were unceremoniously evacuated from what should have been a restful holiday, and the Manila Peninsula Hotel, which pulled out of it four days later with what seemed like nary a scratch.

Epilogue:

Pen officials were in Tagaytay for a planning session when they were called back to handle the tragi-comedy that was unfolding in their hotel. At one point, the general manager, who was negotiating for the evacuation of the hotel guests with both Trillanes and Trillanes’s enemies, could only put up his hands in frustration at what was happening to his hotel.

At one time, the gorgeous hotel PR guy was “with all due respecting” a Magdalo official, gently arguing with him about the possibility that there and then Trillanes and company may be the villains. He could be right. A seventy-something woman whose hair was still in curlers was trying to keep her own panic in check, looking for a granddaughter who wanted to get back their deposit. A man on a wheelchair had to wait longer to get himself out of the hotel.

In the middle of all the chaos, the hotel’s general manager scolded a photographer who was standing on top of a chair in the lobby to get a better shot of Trillanes, who has come down from the mezzanine with a mob -- a real bruising mob -- of photographers, reporters, and cameramen with their soundmen and lightmen. “Get down from my chair. Get down from my chair. I am the general manager of this hotel.” At another, he was picking up a cigarette butt near the entrance to lobby, shaking his head with possibly this cartoon balloon over his head, “How can this be happening to me?”

Which is what I was feeling. I was pulled out of a rare one-day leave to cover the sorry episode. I successfully got into the hotel by pretending to be a hotel guest. When I saw that two of the assigned reporters were already there, I was caught between two emotions -- the learned desire to nail a story and my instinctive aversion to pain. At almost four p.m., or an hour after the deadline has lapsed, I finally decided to leave. I tried to get out as a hotel guest and failed. When the Magdalo guards who were blocking the front door with only a thick rope finally gave the go signal, I got out, luckily with minutes to spare before government troops stormed the hotel with tear gas.

I saw and took videos of the SWAT boys and their big playthings and swore not to wear wedges as I ran away from the warning shots I realized were being fired my way. I suffered not the humiliation of being dragged out, hand-cuffed, or “processed.” I am now known -- among friends who were worried after seeing me on TV thumbing my Blackberry inside the hotel -- as “palos,” which I take to mean a slippery eel.

Here and now

I think about how lucky women—you, me, our mothers, our titas, our sisters, our daughters—are to live in this time and place.

red and tan

How lucky we are, not to have to worry about the pasador—the reusable sanitary pad that menstruating women used, washed, sun-dried, ironed, and reused. How lucky today’s mothers are, not to have to have to do the same things for their babies’ diapers. How lucky we are to have been able to go to school and take our pick of courses, learning about the world and its possibilities. How lucky we are to be able to drive a car, watch movies, buy jewelry and real estate—by ourselves, without having to ask money or permission from our fathers, husbands, or boyfriends.

How lucky we are to be here, working outside the home, earning our keep, discovering our potential for goodness and greatness. How lucky we are not to be considered chattel that can be bought or sold or raped, even by our husbands. How lucky we are to be able to vote (even if sometimes it’s slim pickings) and to be able to be voted into office.

We are all so lucky to be enjoying these privileges as rights, when in the past, the standard was for women not to own their lives. We are all so lucky to be expecting these liberties, to have all these choices. We can choose furniture, careers, workplaces, even the men or women who will make our hearts sing.

We are all able make these choices because women before us fought for these rights. Today, March 8, we celebrate International Women’s Day to commemorate the courage and the sacrifices of these women.

Here, in the Philippines, the feminist movement remembers the contributions of Concepcion Felix and Pura Villanueva. More than one hundred years ago, in 1905, these two women founded the feminist movement in the country. Going against the accepted belief of their time, these two women endured indifference, ridicule, and contempt for daring to claim that women were equals of men, and that women deserved the same political and civil rights as men.

Because of them, we are here and now.

stop and start

In a few hours, 2006 will die and 2007 will be born. That is the way of the world. Tonight we celebrate both the death and the birth. We celebrate what we have had for the last 365 days, possibly if they are anything like mine, a good many days that are so-so, days that tumble over each other not so different from the one that just passed -- busy, not-so-busy, lazy, not-so-lazy, sad, not-so-sad, happy, not-so-happy. But the rhythm of those days and nights hums with a desperation for life -- life that is seeking its own fulfillment. And because of family and friends and once in a while strangers, the hunger is satisfied, the thirst is quenched, the weariness goes away. So tonight we give thanks for those past 365 days and welcome the next subset of time, thankful for the togetherness, for the love, for the attention, for the time. Thank you. -- Veronica

Why I work

my life

Briefly? Because, according to Kahlil Gibran, work is love made visible. And I’m so in love!

When I’m cramming at work, I ask for the impossible—at least two of me, 32 hours in a day, or please, please, please, even just an additional pair of arms. When I’m at my harried worst, my sensitive Patring wants me to be a housewife—to stay home, cook bland food, play kiliti games, stop sibling skirmishes, draw three-dimensional pictures, read Bertdey ni Guido for the nth time, watch Cat in the Hat, stop sibling skirmishes, give them showers in the front yard, re-arrange the furniture, look at piles and piles of pictures, stop sibling skirmishes. (I wonder: Is my eldest reading my mind? When I’m harassed by official business, I know domestic concerns will help me find my balance.)

But my husband tells her I won’t be able to stand it. Of course, he speaks from hindsight: He bore the brunt of my restlessness and resentment. In 1999, after I became a mother of three in four years, I had to put work in the backburner. Motherhood was calling—more like wailing, demanding my full attention. So for almost a year, I was out of the rat race. During that year, I felt my vocabulary drop to one- and two-syllable words (“Ingat,” “Sakit tyan?” “Ihi?”). OK, sometimes four syllables (Maliligo na!). Back to basics meant beyond Neanderthal, it’s pre-preschool.

And then there were the house chores! I have worked for newspapers, where deadlines were sacred and work ran over holidays, including Christmas. But having to think about the lunch menu while washing the breakfast dishes was drudgery.

While I was keeping house, I was also relying entirely on my husband’s money. I’ve been working since I was 17 and I’ve lost all sense of what it’s like to ask for it (although I haven’t lost the sense of accepting graciously). I don’t feel good about spending money somebody else worked for, especially because I’m also able. Not using your potential is one of the greatest sins. There’s nothing like paid work to give you a sense of worth, even if it’s just in pesos and centavos that will cover only a week’s palengke budget.

Once, I had a shouting match with a senior editor—it was so only because he was deaf and I wanted him to hear me. I wanted to be violent but how could I hit an old man without being ruthless? A friend on whose virtual shoulders I spilled my guts (we talked on the phone) told me to let go of my anger. He said, “Think about your kids. What happened is just work; it’s nothing. Your kids are more important.”

“But,” I argued, “I am what I do, not who I’m related to.” Now of course I realize my answer was only partly true. I am all my relationships—with myself, with other people, with the world, with the universe.

Work establishes my relationship with myself. Work brings me joy (good work brings me joy and satisfaction, and sometimes if I’m lucky, more money). My relationships with other people, especially those I cannot choose and are therefore the most intimate and intense, are beyond my control. Ergo, I can only try to be a good mother, a good wife, a good daughter, sister, friend, co-worker. But I cannot ensure what these other parties will feel or believe about me. I rule only over myself. My work—how thorough, how systematic, how brilliant—gives me that power.

So why do I work? Apart from the selfish reasons I enumerated, I work also for my family. When you’re a mom and your work makes it possible for your kids to enjoy more of life, work is the violin in a rock band—providing a classier texture to everyday music. Because I share with them a world bigger and more varied than our home, our lives are richer. Of course, there are times when I wish I could spend more time with my kids and see them grow and develop into the persons I want them to be: sensible, kind, smart, compassionate. But because my work makes me happy, it helps me do just that.